


Silicon Fen

by darkandstormyslash



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Anal Sex, BDSM, M/M, Plot, Spanking, Sugar Daddy, relationship angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-08
Updated: 2016-09-09
Packaged: 2018-08-07 11:49:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 15,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7713832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkandstormyslash/pseuds/darkandstormyslash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eames is the CEO of a successful Cambridge tech company. Arthur is a bored student who sleeps with him for free electronic goods. It should be a simple arrangement, but somehow, it's complicated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> Silicon Fen was a (failed) branding attempt by Cambridge County Council to make a part of England sound like Silicon Valley. This is an age-difference Inception AU that will have a fairly equal mix of bdsm-ish smut and sensible plot. With angst. Enjoy!
> 
> As with my last Inception fic, I've done a split POV. Hopefully it will work just as well this time as it did last time :)

**Arthur**

On Tuesday afternoon, Arthur breaks his phone.

It’s nothing big, nothing dramatic, one minute he’s mooching along pretending to listen to Cobb talking about whatever stupid lecture they had that morning, the next minute there’s a “fuck!” in a high pitched panicked voice. Cobb yanks his arm sideways and a bicycle ploughs into him to the accompaniment of swearwords and apologies. The bike goes sideways, Arthur goes down, and there’s a merry little crunching sound from his bag.

“Oh shit, I’m sorry.” The cyclist is mortified, particularly when Arthur pulls out his slim, sleek little customised phone to find the screen has fractured, “Shit man, was that expensive, do you want me to … um?”

“It’s fine.” Arthur doesn’t smile, but he raises his eyebrows, “Don’t worry about it.”

Cobb watches him, eyes narrowed, as the cyclist stutters more apologies and then wobbles off, “Don’t worry about it?”

Arthur shrugs and puts the phone back in his bag. “I’ll get a new one.”

“How? I thought your dad cut you off?”

Arthur’s father is determined that his son will be self-sufficient at university because in all twenty years of his life so far Arthur has been about as self-sufficient as a tapeworm. His father insists that Arthur will only be given enough money for food, drink, and essentials. Arthur tries helplessly to explain that sushi costs money, properly-made Frappuccinos are expensive, and the latest phone model _is_ a damn essential.

Arthur’s father tells Arthur that he should get a job, and that he can’t rely on the family money forever. Arthur doesn’t understand _why_ he can’t rely on the family money forever. There is plenty of money, but his father refuses to let him spend it.

“Arthur?” Cobb gives him a poke. “Just buy a cheap one online.”

“I’m not getting a cheap phone.” Arthur pulls out his secondary phone from his pocket – a battered indestructible little brick of a thing, and sends a text. Cobb watches him and sighs.

“Please don’t tell me you’re texting _him_.”

“Alright.” Arthur slips the phone back into his pocket. “I won’t tell you.”

 

**Eames**

I’m having a design session with Yusuf when I get the text. I know it’s my kid straight away. Only three people have my personal number; Yusuf’s in front of me and my mother, bless her, still thinks that her phone leaks radiation every time she uses it.

Yusuf watches me all disapproving as I check it, because he also knows who else has this number. The text is short and to the point _< My phone broke. Can I come over tonight?>_. He doesn’t waste words, does my kid. He knows what he wants, and he knows how to get it.

“Can we get on?” Yusuf asks pointedly as I text back with _< Sure. 6pm>_. “Or do you have to shoot off for a booty call?”

“Fuck off.” I say, but not angrily. We go back a long way, me and Yusuf. We started this company up, back when the two of us were just burning each other with soldering irons in his dad’s basement. All hardware, we’ve always made the hardware, and it really is a stroke of luck that we started making it when every nerd in the world started writing good software. We sell it all open source, I mean why the fuck not? That way we get software for free.

It took about six years in total. Six years to go from two unemployed chavs in a Hounslow terrace to two CEOs in a fabulously large piece of real estate in Cambridge. Now we pay other people to piss around with the soldering irons. Pay them well though, we’ve both been there and while it’s pretty good being fantastically rich, if we can do it while keeping everyone who works for us in a nice tidy wage that’s all for the better, yeah?

Anyway. I put my booty call phone away and get back to the meeting. We don’t build them ourselves anymore, but now we have to design the sodding things, and work out where and when and how to launch them, organise the budgets and shares and etc. etc. I sometimes get all nostalgic for that basement in London. Then I go back home to my massive fuckoff house with champagne on tap and a cute rich little student piece of arse bent over the sofa and, nah, don’t really miss it. 

He’s in the games room when I get home. I don’t play video games, not got the time, but he likes them so I built him the games room. He’s fucking up some lad dressed as an elf when I get in so I just leave him to it. Head into my nice fancy kitchen and get myself a beer. He hears me come in and about fifteen minutes later he’s in the kitchen too, in all his droopy grunge get up, and drops his shattered phone onto the breakfast bar.

“What happened?” I don’t really care, but we’ve got to make conversation somehow.

He shrugs. “Bike collision.”

I can’t help my face twisting into a smirk at that. It’s so fucking Arthur. He’s the absolute king of spending money that boy. Like if there’s a sale on floppy beany-hats he’ll be the one person who manages to find a shop where they’re selling them twice as expensive. I remember my mum the first time I took her out to a coffee shop, she couldn’t fucking believe they were charging two quid to dunk a teabag in hot water for her. My Arthur is the opposite, he can’t believe anyone would pay a pound for fifty teabags. I don’t think it’s even occurred to him you can buy teabags.

Ripped jeans, that’s the other one, he spends a bloody fortune on ripped jeans. I should know, I pay for them. Most people I’ve known have dressed like tramps, but he’s the only person I’ve ever known who spends so much damn money on it.

I come over and give him a kiss on the forehead, pulling out my little laptop and opening it, “Find the one you want, luv, I’ll get it for you.” I’ll buy it later because I just know he’ll somehow manage to find the most expensive model at knocked-up prices. “Want a drink?”

“Yeah.”

“Champagne?”

He gives me a sarcastic little grin, “Of course.”

I pour it out, and let him make his phone choice, then put a hand on his lower back and scootle him into the bedroom. “Shall we?”

He turns around and kisses me on the lips. All impulsive and hot, his thigh slipping up between my legs and look at that, he’s moaning already as I tug the beanie off his head and start flicking open the buttons on his big baggy plaid shirt.

Spending money always turns him on.


	2. Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter just to get things rolling. This will update regularly, although not as rapidly as the last one as I'm back at work :p

**Arthur**

Sometimes Arthur thinks he's quite fortunate to be living through an era of history where the perfect phrase has been coined to describe his relationship with Eames.

Two words: It’s complicated.

He knows what it looks like from the outside, to Cobb, to Eames’s business partner. If he’s brutally honest with himself Arthur has to admit that it looks that way from the inside as well. They fuck, and then Eames buys him things. Some nights Arthur feels wildly attracted to Eames, with his suits and money and big house. Those nights he flings himself into Eames’s arms and it almost feels like having a normal boyfriend. Other nights he just wants new clothes, or a laptop, or a new pair of headphones. Then he bends over the bed and plays with his phone while Eames gets on with it and yet somehow, when they’re lying together afterwards and Eames nuzzles his neck and murmurs “brat”, it seems even more intimate.

It’s complicated.

Arthur knows the relationship he has with Eames is a bad idea, because everyone tells him. Cobb tells him, constantly. His mother tells him, and tells him not to tell his father. The random girl he went out with during a charity speed date raised her eyebrows and told him it was a _terrible_ idea and that he was probably being abused.

“Is this a bad idea?” He asks Eames after they’ve both cum in a messy sticky heap, lying in the bed watching as Eames smokes out the window, all naked and built and beautiful.

“Hmm?” Eames turns, hand stuck out the window so Arthur doesn’t inhale any cancer, “Is what a bad idea?”

“You and me. Us. This … relationship?”

Eames frowns, then shrugs. “I don’t know. Do you think it’s a bad idea?”

“Probably.”

He can’t read Eames’s expression, not in the dark as the man replies with, “Do you want to stop it? You know, you can stop anytime you want, yeah?”

Arthur frowns back. He doesn’t want to stop it. If he stops it, he won’t have any expensive electronics and he won’t get to have sex with Eames. There are absolutely no positives in stopping it. “No.”

“Don’t see the problem then.” Eames turns back to the window, blowing smoke out over the large and well-kept garden. Arthur watches him and bites his lip.

There’s a question he could ask, and he’s not sure he wants to. The question is: _If I stopped letting you fuck me, would you stop buying me gifts?_

It’s a nuclear bomb that question, but Eames has a nuclear option as well, which is: _If I stopped buying you gifts, would you stop wanting to fuck me?_

Arthur isn’t ready for that. So he tugs the covers up and lays back down. Eames finishes the cigarette and comes back to bed, rubbing at the marks along Arthur’s backside and gently pinching at red skin.

“You alright kid? Was that a bit too rough, yeah?”

“No.” Arthur reaches forward until he finds a bit of Eames’s skin and then gently kisses it. “That was perfect.”

 

**Eames**

He’s all hot and eager tonight, which is a nice change. Last time he came over I think he got two levels on his damn phone game while I fucked him. Tonight though, he’s like a little nymphomaniac, all ripping my clothes off with his teeth, oh yeah.

So he gets to top tonight, because he’s a fucking eager-diva. I pull out the leather paddle on him while he preps me up, and by the time he’s inside me he’s got an arse like the setting sun for me to grab and squeeze and do all kinds of mischief too while he rams himself in and yells the house down. God he’s loud. Good thing we’re not still in that terrace in Hounslow they’d hear us all the way to Heathrow.

And then I remember that if I was still in a shitty terraced house he wouldn’t look twice at me. So there’s that.

I quit smoking a few years ago, doesn’t fit in with the whole smart-posh-corporate thing me and Yusuf were trying to pull, but of course there’s still some times I indulge. After getting my arse pounded out by a spoilt collage brat who only loves my money is one of those times. I’m sat by the window, thinking of nothing much, in a happy little post-sex daze when he starts up with the heavy questions.

“You, me, us, this relationship.” Fuck me he sounds like a Bridget Jones book. If he wants to leave he can leave. I tell him that and he goes all quiet.

Part of me wants him to leave. Thing is, I’m a massive fucking coward. I know what the honourable thing to do is, the honourable thing to do is to stop using university students as rent-boys. I should break this up, let him down easy, maybe give him a goodbye present to stop him starving to death. Except, thing is, there’s nothing to stop him from finding another sugar daddy right off. He’s a fucking adult, even if I have got about ten years on him. He’s made his life choice. Why should I chuck it away just so someone else can benefit?

I finish my smoke and come over to give his arse a rub. Damn it feels sore, I can feel the heat radiating off it. I get the worry then, that I am just some sick pervert who likes abusing kids too young for me. But he’s all kissing me and reassuring, and I’m knackered what with a busy day and hot sex so I fall asleep without thinking about it too much.

He’s awake before me in the morning, tugging on his clothes and going on about missing lectures and having to fuck off. He’s a lazy bum, my kid, but he’s also a morning person, God’s little joke that. I think of him sitting his sore paddled arse down on a nice hard lecture bench and get a bit frisky again but he just gives me a teasing kiss then ducks out of my arms.

“Go take a wank, fucks sake.”

Good morning to you too. “Yeah alright, sod off, I’ll get your phone delivered to your place.”

“Thanks.” I get another hot little kiss for that, and then he’s gone.


	3. Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Plot starts cranking up in this one, and it takes the angst with it. Enjoy! It also should be clear by now that Arthur and Eames have a kind of established soft-core BDSM relationship here, so tread carefully if that's not your thing.

**Arthur**

Eames buys Arthur electronics, and clothes, and takes him out for meals. He buys Arthur expensive bottles of wine, new video games and fancy gym passes. What he doesn’t do is give Arthur any money. For some reason that would seem like a step too far. If Eames pays him, Arthur knows that they’ll have to stop any pretence that Eames is just a very generous boyfriend and go straight to admitting that Arthur is a whore.

He doesn’t really like the thought of being a whore.

The problem is that without money there are certain things he can’t buy. Eames can’t treat him to every meal, after all. He complains to Cobb about it while showing off his new phone, and Cobb rolls his eyes.

“Oh yeah, my diamond shoes are too tight for my feet.” Cobb eyes the phone jealously. Despite all he thinks of Eames, he is a little jealous that Arthur is constantly sporting the absolute cutting-edge in electronic goods. “If you want him to give you money, you know he would.”

“Yeah, I know ... but …” Arthur doesn’t want to tell Cobb that he thinks receiving money will make him feel like a whore, because Cobb will just point out that he already is a whore. He shifts a little awkwardly on the café chair, and Cobb’s look of jealousy instantly turns to sympathy.

“Did he hit you again?”

Arthur flushes red. “He doesn’t _hit_ me, it’s…”

“I’ve seen the _bruises_ Arthur.” Cobb is looking angry now and Arthur groans and sinks his head into his hands.

“It’s just … it’s complicated.”

“He hurts you.” Cobb snaps, “How complicated is that?”

“It doesn’t, oh fuck Cobb, it doesn’t hurt at the time it’s ….”

“It’s messed up, and you know it.” Cobb is still glaring, and Arthur does rather like how angry Cobb gets on his behalf. “Besides, if you want money without having to pick cash off the bedside table, it’s easy enough to get. Just sell off the stuff he gives you.”

“What?” That has never occurred to Arthur as an option, and he grips the phone a bit harder. “I’m not selling my phone.”

“Not _that_ phone. Tell him your speakers broke, that you need new ones. Then pick up a pair of those little oval ones, you know, the new ones that came out last month. We can sell them off.”

Arthur hesitates. It’s a good idea. It’s exactly the sort of idea Cobb would come up with. It just seems very _dishonest_ somehow. It feels like he’s taking advantage of Eames’s generosity. Eames is more than happy to give Arthur presents, but probably would be less keen on handing out favours if he knew Arthur was selling them on.

“That would be lying.” Arthur finally says, and Cobb’s eyebrows raise.

“Seriously? You’ve never lied to him once?”

Arthur squirms again.

Cobb sighs and then gives a shrug. “Look you don’t have to. But if you need money, I’m just saying it’s a fail-safe way to do it. Those speakers could easily get you half a grand. It's not like we're talking about setting up a  _business_ here. Just a one-off so you can keep buying expensive coffee.”

Arthur can’t think of a reply.

 

**Eames**

It’s less than a week before I get another text, my kid’s clearly having a clumsy month. Speakers this time, some mate of his knocked a chair over them during a wild house party.

Can’t have been that wild, he’s only got about three mates in total. He knows plenty of folks but my Arthur doesn’t really get close to very many of them. I’ve only ever seen one of his mates, grumpy looking bloke who I’m pretty sure hates my guts. Which he has every right to, I mean fair dos I am shagging his friend.

Anyway, my kid comes round and I’m hoping for my hot little piece again but no, he’s sulky as all fuck. Hides in the games room while I watch some crap telly and check the Singapore launch plans, then comes out and drags me into the bedroom. He flings himself across the bed and sticks his arse up.

“There.”

I look at it. Nice arse, but somehow when he’s like this it becomes less appealing. I peel his trousers down and he sticks his ear-buds in his ears and fiddles around with his music. I sigh.

“You sure you want to do this?”

“I showed you the speakers I wanted. I left the link open on the gaming screen.”

That’s not really a reply. Jesus Christ. I don’t want to fuck him like this. I suddenly feel a wave of over-protectiveness for my strange prickly little not-at-all-a-rent-boy student. Gently, I give his bum a squeeze.

“C’mon, what’s up?”

He gives me an exasperated look over his shoulder. “Isn’t this what you want? Are you going to fuck me or not?”

I’m torn between wanting to paddle him stupid and wanting to just cuddle him on the sofa. I give his arse a slap and he flinches and turns determinedly back to his music.

“This isn’t what I want.” I tell him.

He makes a face at the pillow, “Then what do you want?”

“I want a cuddle on the sofa.” It seems fucking stupid to ask for it. It’s not something I’ve ever asked for before. It’s a bit of a change to be honest, now I’m buying him gifts for pretty much _every_ little pretense of relationship. Nothing for free.

He frowns, and I can tell he’s confused as anything. Eventually he says in a little voice. “Will you still buy me the speakers?”

“Yeah.” I tug his trousers up and help him off the bed. “I’ll still buy you the speakers.”

So we spend the night cuddling on the sofa. My Arthur all curled up and relaxing into me, making sarky comments about the programs on the telly and giving me a little kiss every now and again.

And, fucking idiot that I am, I buy him the speakers.


	4. Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the purposes of this chapter, please bear in mind that Cobb is the same age as Arthur, so he currently looks like this: http://tinyurl.com/ogbx3u4
> 
> (Honest Author Note: I am not pleased with this chapter. It's too gratuitous at the end, and too clunky in the middle. So I'm putting the next chapter up at the same time so that people go straight onto the next one and forget that this one isn't so good)

**Arthur**

Cobb hands him £400 in worn bills and Arthur looks at it, eyebrows raised. “You said half a grand.”

“I said it’d _sell_ for half a grand.” Cobb doesn’t meet his eyes.

“Well? This is a hundred out?”

“I came up with the idea.” Cobb gestures vaguely into the distance. They’ve chosen a spot away from prying eyes to exchange money; lurking in the grass downriver and out of town. “I arranged the deal I sold the speakers. I just took a cut. You’ve still got four hundred pounds.”

Arthur thinks about that for a bit, then he flops backwards, from sitting to lying and bursts out laughing.

“What?” Cobb squints at him, confused.

“Dom … you realise this makes you my pimp?”

“What? Arthur, fucks sake…” but Arthur is looking happy, and Cobb can’t help but grin, collapsing down next to him and laughing a little as well. “Oh right. _I’m_ your pimp. Of course. Given I’ve been telling you it’s a bad idea from the start.”

“He didn’t even fuck me…” Arthur stares at the sky. “I literally got paid four hundred pounds to watch shitty late-night TV.”

“I don’t want to know.” Cobb gives a little disgusted noise, then smirks and pokes Arthur in the side. “Well don’t spend it all at once baby, or I’ll get that ass working for me again.”

Arthur starts laughing again, and it takes him a while to stop.

Unfortunately, there aren’t many afternoons available for lazing by the river anymore. The weather’s turning to spring, which means exams are starting to loom. Cobb vanishes into the University Library and Arthur drags all his books to Eames’s and scatters them about the house, for Eames’s long-suffering housekeeper to pick up and leave in a neat little pile in the games room. The games room is Arthur’s room, complete with sofa-bed and lamp, yet he still manages to leave text books in mysterious places all over the house.

He’s lying on Eames’s bed when the question comes, flat on his stomach in a fancy silk robe, legs bent up at the knee and his textbook spread out on the pillow. He’s trying to concentrate on work, and when Eames’s hand gently squeezes at his thigh that takes up most of the rest of his brain-power.

“How’s revision going kid? That a new book?”

“Yeah…” Eames’s fingers are slipping a little further up his leg, and Arthur squirms, well aware that a flimsy little robe is no defence at all against Eames’s hands.

“You buy it?”

Arthur’s at least savvy enough to work out where that line of conversation is going. Textbooks are expensive, and this one came out of his speaker-money. “It’s Cobb’s. He leant it to me.”

“Cobb?” Eames’s other hand joins in now, both of them sliding right up to the curves of Arthur’s arse and squeezing hard. “He’s that grumpy lad, yeah? Blond one?”

Arthur scowls and swats his hands away. “I’m _trying_ to revise.”

Eames moves his hands off instantly, and Arthur feels a bit disappointed. “Got your finals coming up, haven’t you?”

Arthur groans, and drops his head into the textbook. He doesn’t want to think about it. This is his final year at university which means there’s a great yawning gap opening in his future. On the one hand, once he graduates his father might finally let him actually inherit the family money, and then Arthur can just go home and spend that instead of spending Eames’s. Which … would be a good thing. Really. Even if it does mean no more Eames. On the other hand, his father might continue to insist that Arthur remains self-sufficient, and try to get him a job. Arthur doesn’t want to do a job. It sounds like a dull and uninteresting way to spend a life. He wonders if he can pretend he’s found somewhere to work and just keep living with Eames. That almost seems like the best solution.

“Kid?”

Arthur sighs, and reaches behind to tug the robe up off his bottom. “Put your hands back.”

 

**Eames**

The textbook isn’t the first thing I get suspicious about, there’s other stuff before that. His mood for a start, all sulky and snappy and he avoids me for a good couple of weeks. And then when he’s back, it’s with some new clothes and shiny big books that I know cost a bomb, and I feel the bottom drop out of my stomach a bit.

He’s found someone else.

There are plenty of other rational explanations of course. His dad might have relented, or at least agreed to cover the costs of the stuff he needs to pass his damn degree. His mother might be sneaking him some on the side. But the most likely thing is he’s found another bloke to sting for the expensive things he needs.

So I ask him. I mean I choose a bit of a sneaky time to do it, when he’s spread out on my bed looking fucking edible with a cute little frown as he tries to figure out his psychology 101 or whatever they call the damn degree nowadays. I can’t help copping a bit of a feel and I try to bring it up casually: who’s providing the funding at the moment? It’s not like I can complain. It’s pretty clear what kind of relationship we have, and I’ve never asked him to be exclusive.

I’m expecting him to be evasive, but I don’t think I expected him to outright lie. Because apparently, get this, the book belongs to his mate Cobb. Pretty, penniless little Cobb, who owns a broken-down bike, is constantly lugging around library books, and shares the shittiest flat in Cambridge with my kid because it’s the only thing the two of them can afford. Not only is Cobb now buying expensive new shiny textbooks, he’s apparently buying them and lending them out to my kid.

I could probe but there’s no damn point because he’s looking pretty torn up about the whole thing. He sort of flops down and mumbles at me to start distracting him again. Which I’m more than happy to do. I mean there is a possibility that he’s telling the truth, and Cobb has managed to scrape together enough for books and the two of them are using them together. They both do the same course after all.

My hands squeeze and kneed against his arse, fuck I could do this all day. He moans gently and I take my time, digging fingers into the firm curves of muscle and soft skin, sliding my thumb gently between to the sweet little hollow and the tender little twitching muscle waiting there. I run the back of my nails over the sides, up to the jutting bone of his hips and he gives a strange little gasping noise.

“Want me to stop?”

“Fuck no… Eames…?”

“Yeah?” He sounds all wobbly, like he’s about to confess.

“About Cobb…”

And I suddenly chicken out, because as I said, I’m a massive fucking coward. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to hear about this other bloke he’s screwing. Also there’s something in his voice makes me wonder if he’s actually got a crush on Cobb. That might be something to encourage actually, I mean they’re the same age, they get on well, and fuck knows he needs to move on.

He will move on, once he graduates. I’ve got that in the back of my mind. And, well, if it comes to it, it doesn’t matter all _that_ much if I get my stupid heart broken. I’m a daft old fucker who knew exactly what he was getting into. Falling for a rent-boy is the oldest one in the book, I saw it coming a mile away and I still went and dipped my toe in. But the kid? He’s an immature little fuck-up, this one, he doesn’t need to be emotionally screwed over by this, not as his first time.

I reach up and gently kiss the back of his neck, giving his arse a good squeeze as I do. “Hey, whatever you and Cobb are getting up to I don’t give a damn, alright?”

He wriggles underneath me, “But…”

“You fucking him?” It comes out quick, and I’m sort of interested. Because my kid is a hot little piece and Cobb is fairly easy on the eyes. It would be pretty cute actually, but he gives a derisive snort.

“ _Cobb_? No way!”

Ah well, I’ve put the idea in his head at least. He turns his face sideways and smirks at me.

“You’d like to see it I bet…”

He’s a sharp one my kid. I wrench his arse apart and go down with my tongue and he squeaks and yelps and grabs the pillow, still gasping at me.

“Bet y-you’d _love_ to see it, me and him, a-all naked and feeling each other up, a-and he’d g-go down on me a-and suck me so good and … a-ahhh.”

Poor old Cobb. He doesn’t deserve to be used for sex fantasies by his best mate and the dirty bastard fucking his best mate. I replace my tongue with my thumb so I can join in and Arthur moans hard.

“Would you like it, hmm? How about the both of us? Me up _here_ …” I shove my thumb in deep and slide it up against the inside of him while he yells out, “Cobb in _here_ …” two fingers slide up and into his mouth. He sucks them hard while his arse ruts back into my thumb.

I reach down to bite his earlobe and murmur, “Imagine what your Cobb would taste like, when he came…”

That’s it. That’s what sets him off. He screams and grabs his cock and makes a mess all over my damn duvet. He clings onto me a bit and I hold him and stroke him and then he tugs on his robe, grabs his textbook, and stalks out to the game-room with all the dignity he can grab. He’s got a little crib in there, because sometimes he just comes over to crash and I don’t want him feeling he has to end up in my bed. He needs a place he can run away to if it gets too much, because I know what we do is pretty intense at the best of times.

I haul the mess off the bed and grab a new duvet out the cupboard. Then I wank myself stupid thinking of my kid, my kids best friend, and all the horrendously fucked-up shit I would make them do to each other.

Honestly, the sooner the poor guy graduates and gets out of this damn town the better.


	5. Five

**Arthur**

Arthur lays in the games room alone, and tries to think. At first he just tries not to think of Cobb, because it feels very odd masturbating over Cobb in that way, even if a small snide and vicious part of him thinks that Cobb deserves it for making him lie to Eames.

Arthur doesn’t like lying to Eames. Despite what Cobb says, he never has lied to Eames. There’s never been the need; Eames is happy to accept all the worst parts of his character. Sometimes Arthur even enjoys being as prickly and irritable as he can, just to test, to get to the point where Eames will snap and snarl at him and kick him out. Arthur feels a bit unsafe not knowing where that limit is, but so far, he hasn’t found it. Eames seems to like him exactly the way he is.

Arthur knows he’s using Eames. That’s the point of Eames. To provide the things that Arthur needs, in return for serviceable and discrete sex. The kind of sex Eames likes, which involves paddles and leather and a few odd toys. And Arthur enjoys it too, but enjoying it isn’t the point. The point is that they both get exactly what they want.

And now Arthur isn’t sure what he wants. If he wants money, he has to keep lying to Eames. The £400 is almost gone, even though Arthur knows Cobb still has over half of his own small share left, and will be using that to cover the rent. Arthur just doesn’t _keep_ money. He spends it. If he wants electronic goods, he has to make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid, like form close attachments to a man who is essentially nothing more than a sugar daddy.

Arthur looks around at the games room and sighs. For the last year and a half his life has been blissfully easy, and now Cobb and finals and the world in general have conspired to make it very difficult.

Because if what he wants is Eames, he has to stop lying. He has to face up to the fact that it’s a relationship, that he has responsibilities in it, he has to let himself open up emotionally, and not rely exclusively on Eames financially.

And Arthur just doesn’t feel brave or ready to do that.

He certainly doesn’t feel brave or ready enough to find out what Eames thinks of him.

Arthur knows what his father thinks of him, he knows what his tutor thinks of him. He even knows what Cobb thinks of him.

He wants to keep believing that Eames really does like him, exactly the way he is.

 

**Eames**

My kid takes fright again after that night, and I don’t really blame him. Besides, he’s got his work and shit to do. Finals at Cambridge are no joke, and even a lazy genius like my kid needs to put a bit of graft in. That way he can graduate, get his degree, and his posh rich parents can be all proud of him. Fuck, I know I will be.

I send him a few care packages – fancy food, vouchers for his favourite coffee shops, posh chocolates, all of that. I know it seems like I’m being stupidly generous to some slutty little punk but honestly, money’s just a fucking thing nowadays. I spent my life having none of it, and now suddenly I have enough of it to carpet the fucking walls with. I could retire right now and still fling ten pounds notes into the sea every day till I’m 80. I got into a right barney with my accountant because he wanted me to go into some offshore tax thingy to save money. Save money? My mum used to cut the fucking labels off baked-bean tins to collect the coupons. _That’s_ needing money. I don’t need money. I’ve _got_ money.

And it’s nice to spend it on my kid. Not that he’s grateful. Honestly, I sort of like that. I get a kick out of the arrogant little sod. Especially now everyone I meet is bowing and scraping to me and Yusuf like we own a small country. I get a bit of the warm fuzzies when he ignores me, or rolls his eyes at me, or acts like I’m just a massive waste of air that happens to be providing him with expensive cuff-links.

And yeah, it’s partly because it means I get to snap the leather across his arse for it afterwards. Heh.

Anyway he comes back into my life about three weeks before his finals, practically climbing up the wall with nervous tension. We shag it out on the bed and he’s wild, properly hammers into me, and then lays in bed afterwards reading his notes while I pass out. He even gets a few goes on the giving end of the paddle, which I’m well up for, but he’s properly not into unless he’s stressed. He holds it like a housewife holding a dead rat by the tail, but it’s still pretty hot when it bounces down. Gets me all riled up, so he doesn’t have to do it for long before I’m pouncing on him and nailing him into the sheets.

I don’t ask him about the expensive textbooks again, and he doesn’t turn up with any new gear. Whatever it was, it seems to have been a one-off. I’ve still got it in the back of my mind though, and I’m also aware that what with him graduating we’re coming to the end of our little tryst together.

Which is why I swipe the headphones.

I don’t _steal_ them exactly. Thing is, I own them. Or rather, I own most of them. I own the outsides of them. What I don’t technically own is the little bit inside them that talks to his phone and does all the clever wireless bits with his phone software.

But I want to give him a present. I want to impress him. I want to leave him with something a bit special. A prototype one-of-a-kind headphone seems like a good way to go, especially as the little earbuds he’s currently using are looking a bit worse for wear.

After all, it’s my kids private property and the clumsy daft thing will probably break them in about three days’ time.

Who’s going to know?


	6. Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will come a little sooner, I promise! Plot starts heating up in this one, and there are emotions all over the place.

**Arthur**

Cobb comes around to his room the morning of graduation, and together they fiddle with the gown and robe and try to make it look like a halfway normal outfit. Arthur’s parents drove up the night before and they’re staying in a fancy hotel nearby. Cobb’s parents will be arriving closer to the ceremony. Arthur’s room is half packed, or rather everything his mother could stick into a box has been stuck into a box and the rest is just lying around.

“I can’t believe we’re graduating…” Cobb looks around the room wistfully while Arthur sits on the bed, buried in his phone. “Did you talk to your dad about afterwards?”

“Yes.” Arthur doesn’t look up.

“What did he say, do you have to get a job?”

“No.”

“Arthur!” Cobb sits down next to him and pokes him. “What are you doing next year?”

“I’m going back to live at home, I’ll be able to spend any money I like and I’ll learn how to manage the estate.” Arthur answers robotically and Cobb frowns because that sounds like exactly what Arthur would want and Arthur sounds utterly miserable.

“That’s good though, right?”

“Yeah.” Arthur has his phone game open but he doesn’t seem to be playing it. The small rodent he’s meant to be piloting through a maze keeps making unhappy noises as it gets eaten by various poorly-rendered enemies. “That’s good.”

“Arthur what the hell is wrong with you.” Cobb starts poking through the boxes, and his eyes widen as he sees the headphones, sleek and shining new, thrown carelessly on top of Arthurs jeans. “Oh wow, Arthur what the hell are these?”

Arthur peeks up for long enough to take a glance, not long enough for Cobb to notice he’s been crying. “Headphones.”

“These are fantastic, seriously. From Eames?”

“They were a leaving present.” And suddenly Arthur is angry, angrier than Cobb has ever seen. “A fucking present. To thank his whore for parting his legs so nicely. Fucking take it, I don’t care.”

“Are you sure?” Behind Cobb’s eyes, little e-bay numbers light up, all big and filled with zeros.

“I don’t want to see it ever again. I don’t want to see him ever again. I don’t fucking want anything to do with him.”

Cobb looks up at that, because Arthur is sounding very upset. “Did he … do anything? When you told him you were leaving?”

“No.”

“You could probably get him arrested, you know, if you still have marks, I mean –“

“Fucking NO.” Arthur shouts it so loud Cobb looks shaken. “I said I didn’t want anything to do with it, OK? Not him, not anyone. And I never have to do it again now.”

Cobb gives him a sideways look. “Arthur, you probably should never have done it to start with.”

“Just take the fucking headphones and leave.” Arthur snaps, and tries not to feel too disappointed when Cobb does exactly that.

 

**Eames**

I make a bit of a thing for my last night with the kid. Book a fancy restaurant, hire him a nice suit. He looks all kinds of empty when he turns up at the house, sort of floppy and dull, but he perks up a bit once he gets the Armani on him and a few glasses of Moet in him.

Fucking hell I’ve fallen for this kid. Worst thing is, I think he’s fallen for me a tad as well. He’s got these big mooning eyes on, and keeps going all listless mid-conversation. Thing is it’s graduation for him, so he’s probably thinking back over the last three years of his life and, well, they’ve mostly been me fucking him for cash and him studying. He hasn’t had much time for anything else.

So I make a decision, right there and then. This isn’t just his last time, it’s mine as well. No more fucking around with college kids. If I’ve buggered up his last few years I’m not going to do it to anyone else.

We go out to a posh club, and my kid chooses the most expensive drinks, fuck I’ll miss him. Nobody can spend money like him, nobody at all. I feel him up while he drinks them, because fuckit, it’s my last night as well. He leans against me and gets drunk as a lord and then we go home.

And Jesus fucking Christ its madness.

I fuck him, he fucks me, I paddle him till he’s screaming my name, he gets the cane going all over my legs and arse and then just falls over crying for no reason I can see. I suck his cock till he stops, and then he wants filling up so I slide a vibrator in him and he just fucking bounces on it like he’s in heat. I lick champagne off his body, then pour it right over his stinging arse and he rubs ice all over me, fucking _all_ over me and my legs are flailing so much I knock the ice bucket over. It’s mad and wild and crazy and, honestly, not all that _fun_. It’s like we’re desperately searching for something to do that will make us both pass out so we can stop thinking, and we never quite reach it.

The next day I give him the present. He stares at the headphones for a long time and I want to say something. I want to tell him that these are literally priceless. They’re the only ones that exist in the world. I’ve finally reached peak expense for him. But he’s looking hungover, and shattered, and unpleasantly ill, so instead I just kiss him on the forehead.

“Good luck kid. Enjoy it, yeah?”

“Yeah.” He mumbles. Oh fuck. He’s gone and fallen for me, I can see it. So I just give his cheek a little pat and lift his chin up.

“Hey, c’mon kid. All over, yeah? First day of the rest of your life.”

“The rest of my life.” That seems to pull him together a bit. “Yes. I’m going back to my father’s place.”

“Cool.” For a moment I think he’s going to give me the fucking address but thank Christ he doesn’t. That would be beyond awkward. I've done it proper, this saying good bye thing, had his phone numbers changed and everything. He really doesn't need to be looking over his shoulder for me to pop back into his life.

“Yeah.” He isn’t looking at me and then he gives an awkward nod. “Bye.”

“Bye.”

I want to thank him, but somehow that seems like it would come out wrong. So instead I just watch as he walks away out of my house, limping a little after everything I did to him.

It’s a week later that I get a call from my lawyer.


	7. Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all of your wonderful comments! I will respond to them all but there is a lot of crap going on in real life at the moment and I guessed you would all prefer me to prioritise actually getting the chapters up :p
> 
> NOTE: This chapter starts with something a bit new - Cobbs POV! Arthur will be back again next time, but for now we needed to jump into Cobb's head for a bit to move the plot along.

**Cobb**

Cobb goes back with his parents for a few weeks and has a bit of a summer holiday, but he’s just graduated now, and there’s a polite yet unspoken expectation that he will actually go and start earning some money. A psychology degree doesn’t get him all that far into the world of work, but he does manage to find a private councillor who agrees to let him shadow her for work experience.

It’s not a job that will pay. But that doesn’t matter so much because Cobb can find a job to do in his spare time.

Also selling Arthur’s headphones give him about three month’s rent, right off the bat.

Cobb is slightly surprised at how much they sell for. He doesn’t even have the original packaging, but he diligently writes down every scrap of information he can find on the side of them, and on the insides as well once he gently opens them up to see what electronics lie hidden within. He takes plenty of pictures, and in the last day of bidding someone shares it on some forum somewhere and the price shoots up through the roof.

It’s such a high price that Cobb almost feels a bit guilty selling them. Almost.

He doesn’t feel guilty on Arthur’s account. About a week after he starts work Arthur sends him a check for several months worth of backdated rent and loaned spare change which tells Cobb pretty clearly that Arthur has been released on his father’s money. He spares a grin for Arthur, his weird rich friend who got into some stupid sex stuff with a millionaire. Arthur’s back home now and happy.

Which is why he’s incredibly suspicious when said sex-mad millionaire (who, now he thinks about it, is probably a billionaire) comes knocking on the door of Cobb’s tiny rented flat.

“Dom Cobb?”

Cobb opens the door and gives a scowl, “He’s gone home.”

“I know.”

“I’m not about to take over.”

There’s a brief pause, long enough for Eames’s eyes to rake over him quickly before the answer is another “I know, but I need to get back in touch with him.”

“No.” Cobb scowls and slams the door, swearing as it bounces off an expensive pair of loafers, “Just piss off, you’ve fucked him up enough.”

“I know, look.” Eames doesn’t look about to move so Cobb grudgingly lets him in. “Cobb, sorry, I just, I just need to give him a call.”

“No.” Cobb is more than happy to keep saying it.

Eames sighs and sits down on a somewhat motheaten sofa, running his fingers through his hair, “My lawyer needs to give him a call.”

Cobb feels an unhappy squirming sort of sensation deep in his stomach, “What? Why? What kind of shit, did you make him sign something?”

“What, no!” Eames gives him an annoyed look, “I just gave him something. Something that, something that wasn’t technically mine to give away. I just thought he’d keep it, you know, frankly I thought he’d break it. But … “ Eames’s face twists up and Cobb suddenly has a very clear premonition of where this conversation is headed. “He sold it. Hadn’t even been launched yet. I’m in a whole fucking shitload of trouble.”

There’s a bit of silence and then Cobb sits down next to him. “Shit.”

“Nah, it’s alright kid, it isn’t his fault, its mine. Through and through. But they need a statement –“

“Shit.”

“What?” Eames moves his face out of his hands to look at him. “What the fuck does this have to do with you?”

Cobb swallows nervously, and his voice seems to come from a very long way away, “I think I sold it…”

 

**Eames**

I won’t pretend it doesn’t screw me up a little inside that phone call. He didn’t even wait a week my kid, before selling the fucking headphones. Not even a week. I guess I had some sort of soppy romantic idea that he’d like them. That he’d think of me whenever he used them. No such damn luck.

But I don’t have long to worry about that, because I am in a whole heap of trouble of my own. Proper metric shitton. Those headphones weren’t launched, they were still fucking patent pending, and now they’ve been released on the world in a weird crappy beta state with uncertain levels of copyright. So not only am I being sued up the fucking arse, I’ve also now lost any chance of a business deal with the lads who made the headphone software because understandably they want nothing more to do with us.

I go straight round to Yusuf’s after my lawyer stops shouting at me, so that he can shout at me for a bit instead.

“You fucking WHAT?”

Oh yeah, he’s mad. And he’s right, damn him.

“You gave a piece of prototype in-progress design unfinished damn merchandise to a _hooker_? Are you fucking _mad_ Eames, have you actually lost it, how incredibly unthinkingly stupid were you.” Yusuf stares at me in disbelief and honestly I don’t blame him. I’ve fucked up pretty much the whole company with this. Who else is going to work with us, if they can’t be certain which random rent-boy their material is going to be passed onto? “He used you for _money_. He wanted money. Are you fucking _dense_? Of course he sold it!”

It continues for a while, and I don’t really have a defence. Those headphones should never have left the office, and they certainly shouldn’t have been placed in the hands of someone likely to sell them on.

Thing is, it genuinely never crossed my mind that he would sell them. He doesn’t sell things, my kid, he just buys them. It makes me start thinking back, wondering what else he sold. Whether he was using me as part of a supply chain, fuck I don’t know. Thing is I know he didn’t sell most of it, because I used to see him with the stuff. He wore the clothes, he used the electronics, he broke the phones.

But like I said, I don’t have much time to pull apart how this makes me feel about my kid, because everything else is falling apart around me.

“You know…” Yusuf says mid-rant. “We could make this a lot less complicated. I mean is there any proof you actually gave it to him? Do you have a receipt or any proof? We could say he stole it.”

It’s fucking tempting, but it would drop my kid right in it. I shake my head.

“That changes it from a whole issue of intellectual property and good business practise into just simple theft.” Yusuf knows it’s wrong, he’s talking sort of hopeless like he needs me to convince him to go through with it. “It makes you indiscrete, yeah, giving your key to a hooker, but it no longer makes you a complete corporate liability.”

“Nah. We can’t.” He knows we can’t, but he’s right. It would solve a hell of a lot of problems.

I need to get in touch with the kid again, drag the whole fucking shit out into the open, but of course I’ve cut myself off pretty effectively. He changed his number, moved out, I literally can’t find him. His facebook location thingy puts him somewhere in Cheshire, but I’m not hiking up and down Cheshire banging on doors. I phone his old flat, but the landlady says he didn’t leave a forwarding address.

But his grumpy friend Cobb did.

She’s not very discrete that landlady. I get the address and go straight round to face Mr. Cobb. Unsurprisingly he’s not happy to see me, and when I tell him what I’m there for he goes white. Like actually white. He sort of falls over on the sofa next to me.

“I think I sold it…”

And that’s when I know that all three of us are fucked.


	8. Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING this chapter is the worst - angst, drama and misery all over the place. I've posted the next chapter as well, so as not to leave you all on a complete downer. :p

**Arthur**

Arthur graduates, standing next to his father holding a fake-scroll for the photos, and tries to feel something other than a sort of horrible blankness. He goes back home to the family estate, sends Cobb all the money he’s borrowed over the years, hires lots of taxis because the estate is in the middle of the country and he never got around to learning to drive.

He misses Eames, with a desperate terrible sort of longing that makes him despise himself. He remembers the last night he spent with Eames; the first half trying to remind himself that he hated Eames just wanting to love him. He’d started crying, strung out with the tension and the uncertainty and the whole mess of a relationship that he wasn’t sure how to deal with.

Eames’s response had been to suck him off. And Arthur had realised with helpless terror that he couldn’t really complain about it because that, essentially, was what he was there for.

He’d spent the rest of the evening trying to remind himself he loved Eames, while slowly starting to hate him.

And then he’d gone home, stuck wandering through a big empty house, trying to get interested in financial matters that he didn’t care about. No more expensive nights out with Eames, or cheap nights in with Cobb.

Arthur feels cheated somehow. But also hugely relieved.

Then Eames calls his mobile.

He doesn’t recognise the number, doesn’t really even look at it, just answers with a bored “Yeah?” As soon as he hears Eames’s voice his eyes widen, and he throws the phone into his underwear drawer, shuts the door to his bedroom and runs downstairs.

Eames can’t do this. Eames can’t have the power to do this to him anymore, to do _anything_ to him anymore. Arthur hears the house phone start to ring and blindly runs out into the gardens, down to what his father calls ‘the shed’ but what is actually another whole little building with a small bed and desk in it. He locks the door behind himself, leans against the wood and tries to relax.

He stays there for the rest of the afternoon, until the shadows are lengthening, then he heads back into the house where his mother scurries out to meet him.

“Arthur, uh, your friend Cobb, he arrived about an hour ago…”

Arthur feels his body still, feels his feet go leaden. He walks up and into the house, walks into the parlour, and there he is. Eames. Sitting there like it doesn’t matter a bit what this is doing to Arthur right now.

Most of him feels blank. But there’s a small and shameful part that feels wildly and passionately excited. Eames just can’t live without him, Eames is here to sweep him away to a world of glamour and excitement and expense and treat Arthur to everything he needs while having large amounts of kinky sex with him.

“Arthur, fuck, I’m so sorry.” Cobb stands up and comes over, then pauses in front of him like he doesn’t know what to do. “Um, Eames is in, uh, quite a lot of legal trouble. Those headphones he gave you, the ones I sold, his lawyer called. He’s fucked.”

Arthur stares at him, and then starts laughing so hard it takes him a while to stop.

 

**Eames**

My kid hangs up on me as soon as he hears my voice on the phone, and then refuses to answer every damn number Cobb has. It isn’t really a surprise, but fuck it’s a bit unpleasant. There’s a small stupid romantic part of me that was just waiting for him to answer the phone all breathless, “Oh Eames! It’s so good to hear from you! Please come here and sweep me away to a world of expensive glamour and kinky sex” etc. etc.

As if.

We drive to his house, or rather I drive and Cobb sits in the passenger seat, alternating between moody silence, and bouts of over-talkative paranoia while he works through scenarios for us both spending fifty years in prison together, or getting chased by a mob of software developers. It’s a good few hours and it is not a fun journey. Poor old Cobb is half hysterical he’ll get a prison record, and I don’t blame him. He’s not got Arthur’s money, he needs to work and he won’t be doing that with a record on him.

We get to Arthur’s place and yeah alright I’m impressed. It’s fucking massive. I mean sure I have money, but it’s all shiny new money – it exists in stocks and shares and fancy holidays and overexpensive coffee machines. Arthur’s got old money that exists in antique houses and fuckoff huge acres of land. I glance at Cobb.

“You ever come here before.”

“Yeah.” Cobb gets out the car and slams the door a little harder than he needs to. “Last Christmas holiday.

“Big place.”

“Yeah.”

He’s alright is Cobb. If he’s right and we do both end up in prison, I’ll keep an eye on his arse for him. Arse like his, he’ll need it.

Arthur’s mum meets us and tells us that the kid has done a runner so we’re taken into a room that, no joke, is actually called the parlour. He has a fucking parlour. She brings us out some weak tea and posh biscuits and we eat them in about two seconds because we’re both so damn nervous. She feels she has to wait with us, so we can’t even talk about it. We end up making small talk about the weather, and Cobb’s family, and growing tomato vines, and just before the small talk becomes practically fucking miniscule we hear the front door open and Arthur’s mum looks incredibly grateful and scoots off.

Then my kid walks into the room and god it’s good to see him. It’s less than two weeks since I last saw him but still, it’s been a hell of a two weeks. I want to just run over and hug him but obviously that’s out of the fucking question. Cobb does the honours instead, stuttering and looking awkward and then my kid starts laughing.

In fact he gets borderline hysterical.

We help him sit down and get him a drink of water. Cobb pets his shoulder until he stops making weird gulping noises and then he stares at the floor and says “Sorry it’s just … this actually has nothing to do with me.”

“What!” Cobb is looking baffled but I’ve already got my brain to the unpleasant place he’s headed.

“I didn’t ask Eames to give me the headphones. I didn’t ask you to sell them.” Arthur’s stopped laughing now, he sounds a bit pissed off to be honest, “I didn’t ask for _any_ of this to happen. And I didn’t take part in any of it. I had nothing to do with those bloody headphones and I never _wanted_ anything to do with them.”

He’s not looking at Cobb as he says it he's glaring at me, and it’s blatantly obvious that he’s not just talking about headphones. Fuck it though, at the moment I need my heart stomped on just to teach me a lesson and if it’s what he needs to do to get himself past the whole fucked up thing we had then hell, he can do it.

That’s when I realise.

I do love him.

Cobb grabs his shoulders and gives him a shake, snaps at him, “You gave them to me, you fucking _gave_ them _away_ …” But I stand up and gently pat Cobb on the head, why not it’s the closest I’ll get.

“Hey, boys, both of you. It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine!” Now Cobb’s getting hysterical as well.

“He’s right, it’s not his fault.” I can’t look him in the eyes though, so I look at Cobb instead which is fine because he’s looking murderous, “Not your fault either. Not Yusuf’s fault, not my employees fault. Nobody’s fault but me.”

They both stare at me, and then Arthur speaks.

“So?”

Jesus, kid, show a bit of mercy. Falling on my sword here.

“So it’s my problem. Not a company problem, not your problem. I’ll resign and settle out of court. Pay them what they need and disconnect it from everything else. It’s my scandal, you’ll just be ‘unknown seller’ and ‘unknown rent boy’.”

Arthur flinches and I feel bad because it was a cheap shot and I should’ve been above taking it.

But I’m not above it. I mean this is my life I’m destroying here. No more money, no more company, no more job. Yusuf can take over, that lass Ariadne who works in strategic planning, she’ll keep it running, she could run the place alone. Oh I’ll keep in touch, do some work and file it under ‘consultancy’ or some buzzword. But there no way I can keep up the massive pay-cheques.

Cobb looks confused and angry, but I can see it sinking into Arthur’s mind. He shakes his head. “You can’t do that.”

“You’d rather I say you nicked it?”

“I’d rather you say Cobb nicked it.”

Cobb starts spluttering, and I give a tired smile, “Fun though it would be to stick your mate into prison and get off scot free he’s a decent guy and I’m not that evil.”

“You’re a terrible friend.” Cobb snaps at Arthur.

“You’re a terrible pimp.”

I leave them to it, and go outside with my phone. The sun’s setting behind the house, which means it’s getting pretty dark and cold outside. I stare at my lawyer’s number and hesitate.

Last chance, I don’t have to do this.

Except I do, of course I do.

I make the call.


	9. Nine

**Arthur**

Eames leaves the room and Arthur and Cobb have a few seconds to stare at each other and then Cobb just falls into Arthur’s chest. “Oh fuck.”

“What the hell is going on?” Arthur asks, patting his back.

“Something very expensive and corporate and legal.” Cobb groans, “I’ve spent the last few hours in the car with your boyfriend panicking about it.”

“I’m not sure I entirely understand.” Arthur murmurs but he understands enough. Eames gave him a present he shouldn’t have and now Eames is screwed. “And he’s not my boyfriend. Why the hell did he do it?”

“Do what?” The sofa is big enough for both of them, so Cobb wriggles over till they’re next to each other then dumps his head in Arthur’s lap. He has no sexual interest in Arthur, or indeed in any man, but the two of them have always been close and he feels almost getting arrested gives him a bit of leeway for getting comforted. “And tell your mum I’m staying the night.”

“Steal a pair of headphones.” Arthur stares out the window where he can just about see Eames on his phone, pacing up and down the front lawn. “Give them to me. Then destroy his own life rather than drag us through court.”

“Because he’s an idiot.” Cobb grumbles. “And because he’s completely mad about you.”

Arthur looks down at him. “You think so?”

“Either that or he actually has part of his brain missing. Which given he’s built up an entire company from scratch is unlikely. Can I sleep in the green room? The one that isn’t green anymore?”

“Sleep where you like.” Arthur murmurs, because it’s suddenly occurred to him that Eames will be staying the night as well.

 

**Eames**

I make the call and then I head back inside. Nothing to do now. Lawyers will talk and then I’ll get a bill at the end. Also Yusuf will call at some point to shout at me some more. Don’t really care anymore. It seems strangely liberating to not have anything to worry about. Or rather, I’ve got plenty to _worry_ about, but I can’t do a damn thing about any of it.

The kids mum gets us some food, or at least tells someone to cook us some food, and we all eat pretty formally in a big lounge with the second best cutlery or whatever. Then I get shown a room, which is pretty decent. I was ready to drive back but Arthur’s mum is all ‘oh no it’s far too late you couldn’t possibly’ and I’m genuinely not in the mood to argue.

They’ve got about twenty-odd spare rooms anyhow. Cobb clearly knows where he’s going, and vanishes up the stairs. I walk into my room and its old and cold and in a strange house in the middle of nowhere. I’m suddenly really glad I gave my mum a fund of her own. The money’s in her name, enough to keep her comfortable for as long as she’s around to need it. Sensible move that, even though it just seemed like excess paperwork at the time.

I lie in bed thinking about things like that; my mum, and Yusuf, and how we built all the business up and I’m feeling pretty low, got to admit. Then I hear the door creak open. I look up in surprise and my kids there, in nothing but a big nightshirt that _almost_ comes down far enough to keep him decent.

My mouth goes dry. I can’t hack this.

“Eames?”

“Yeah.” I watch as he comes closer to the bed and then sits on the end of it. “Look kid, you should get some sleep.”

He looks at me, I don’t think he’s really thought of what to say. He dithers a bit, I get the feeling he’s trying to choose between ‘thanks’ and ‘sorry’, or maybe not because my kid’s never said sorry in his life.

“Have sex with me?” He blurts it out, and as soon as he says it any desire I had to sleep with him vanishes. Not because he becomes unattractive, he just suddenly seems very small and cute and I laugh softly. I wrap my arms around him and tug him down into bed and he gives a surprised squeak and nuzzles against me.

“Oh fuck, kid, I’m sorry.” I breath into his neck, because it feels nice just cuddling.

“I don’t have to do this.” He’s glaring a bit but he looks adorable.

“Of course you don’t.” I’m on the verge of saying ‘you never did’ but of course he always felt he had to. I start to realise then, not fully that comes later, but I start to realise just how much his entire worldview on sex got buggered up during the two years I had my mitts on him.

He wriggles a bit more and then leans his head on my shoulder. “What are you going to do?”

“Pay a fuckload of money and buy a smaller house.” I sigh because really, that’s all there is to it. “Look kid, I’ve been poor before. And I won’t be fucking destitute. I’ll still have enough to survive and I’ll get enough money to scrape by, yeah? I won’t be living off baked-beans. I just won’t be able to drink champagne every night.”

He huffs a laugh, “I miss the champagne.”

“You miss it? I’ll damn miss it.”

Another laugh, “Eames are you going to have sex with me?”

“Probably not tonight darlin’, got some things on my mind.”

He falls silent for a bit, considering it. For a moment I think he’s going to walk right out the room, but then he just snuggles against my body and murmurs gently, “I did miss you.”

“Yeah?” I’m on tenderhooks. Can’t work out whether it’s a declaration of love or just a quick pity snuggle for a sad old man who made a daft mistake.

“A little. Not a lot, but a little.”

That’s my kid. I wrap my arms around him and somehow that makes it far easier for me to drift off to sleep.


	10. Ten

**Arthur**

Arthur wakes up first the next morning. He’s an early riser and the curtains in the guest room are a lot thinner than he’s used to. For a while he just lies there, thinking through what’s happened, trying to get the squirming feeling of guilt out of his stomach.

He doesn’t feel guilty for the headphones being sold, that wasn’t his call after all. But he feels a bit guilty for not caring about them. Eames _stole_ a very expensive piece of property for him, for a last-night present, and Arthur feels bad that he didn’t care more for the gesture.

Eames is lying small, curled up on his side. Arthur sleeps like a starfish, but Eames is more compact when he’s asleep. Gently, Arthur strokes his hair, then his shoulder. Eames didn’t bring any pyjamas with him so he’s sleeping naked. Arthur’s hand slides down over his stomach, his hip, down to his backside where he gently strokes and pats.

He can’t pinpoint the exact moment Eames wakes up, but his body slowly becomes a little sharper and more ready and then there’s a gentle murmur of “I’m asleep.”

Arthur lets his hand squeeze a bit harder at that. Eames flings an arm over his head.

“I’m asleep, bugger off.”

Arthur gives a smile, lands a smack on Eames’s arse and then slides of the bed to the accompaniment of an indignant squawk. “The showers just down the hall, I’ll get you a towel.”

“I’m not getting up _now_.”

“Yes you are, you have to drive back to Cambridge.”

Eames properly wakes up at that, frowning and pushing himself upright, looking confused and a little upset. “What?”

“You need to sort out your house, and your business and all that crap.”

“Alright…” Eames looks adorable in the morning, his hair all sticking up and Arthur smirks.

“The sooner you go back, the sooner you sort it out, the sooner I can come and stay with you.”

Eames blinks at him, and then looks down. “Ah come on kid, stop teasing. I won’t have anything to give you.”

Arthur rolls his eyes, rooting around in the cupboard and tugging out a towel. “Obviously. But I don’t need money anymore. And you need someone to buy you champagne.”

Eames watches him. For a while he stays quiet, until Arthur’s cheeky little smile turns to a slightly worried one.

“Unless.” Arthur says quietly. “Unless you don’t want me to.”

Eames continues looking at him, then comes over and wraps his arms around him. He’s all naked and soft and warm, and Arthur lets himself lean into Eames’s body hissing fiercely “If you don’t ever want to see me again that’s fine, I’ll stay here, you don’t have to, I’ll keep away…”

“Shhh…” Eames kisses the top of his head. “Course I want to see you. Just don’t want to fuck you up any further than I already have.”

Arthur draws away to look at him, and gives a one-shouldered shrug. “Yeah, well.”

“Are you really going to want to stick around with me when I’m not buying you anything?”

Arthur shrugs again, and looks up at him, frank and honest. “I don’t know. That’s what I want to find out.”

 

**Eames**

I’m in a bit of a thoughtful mood as I drive away from my kid’s house that morning. To be honest, it’s the longest we’ve been in each other’s company without shagging each other. Thing is I know academically this won’t work. He’s a posh fancy college brat with no job. I’m a (recently) unemployed 30-year old fuckup with the ruins of a tech empire behind me and no real desire to start building up again. It’s like in that bloke’s poem: _If you can make one heap of all your winnings, and loose and start again at your beginnings …_ then you’ll be completely fucking buggered my son.

Something like that.

I can’t try and make a new business right away. Maybe give it five years and I might. But we had a hell of a lot of luck and random chance and energy to get the first one moving, it’s not like putting down a patio. The second try might just end in dismal failure.

Anyway I drive back to Cambridge and Yusuf doesn’t yell at me, which is decent of him, but we talk to my lawyer and then she talks to the guys who made the headphones. We settle out of court. It’s for an amount of money that makes my eyes water frankly, and I think I make a page in the tabloids a well “Sleezy CEO steals for student boytoy”. Arthur cuts out a copy of the page and mails it to me in case I missed it. The only picture they could find of him was a fuzzy out-of-focus shot that’s actually of Cobb, which is hilarious. I frame it and stick it on the wall of my new, tiny little house.

It’s not a _tiny_ house. Honestly, I’ve lived in smaller. It’s out of the city though, past Cherry Hinton, two bedrooms. I sell most of my stuff, partly because it won’t fit in the new house and partly to afford the lawyer’s fees. I’m doing a bit of consultancy work still for Yusuf, which is mostly my old job but for a hell of a lot less money.

It’s not bad. It’s not great, but it’s not bad. Some nights I do wake up and stare at my tiny room and think _fuuuuck_. Fucked that life up. Better luck in the next one, yeah? My mum tried her whole life to stop me turning into another kid off the estate nicking electronics and looks like she failed.

I leave it a couple of months. Because if we’re going to do this, to properly try and see if we can actually be _boyfriends_ or some shit rather than just fuck-buddies with cash prizes, then we need a bit of distance. I don’t phone him, I just text and say, offhand, that I’m settled and, you know, if he wants to pop over…

He makes me wait a week, the bastard.

Then he turns up at my front door with a rucksack.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poem that Eames is probably vaguely remembering from school is "If" by Rudyard Kipling. It's a badly dated piece of colonial doggerel but it's actually not a bad poem.
> 
> This story is starting to wrap up. So the question for all you wonderful Inception reviewers is ... which AU shall I drag these boys into next? I've got vague plannings of a sort of post-apocalyptic-punk setting, but I shall have to see if anything inspiring hits me.
> 
> Honestly, as long as you guys keep leaving the awesome comments, I'll keep writing it :D


	11. Eleven

**Arthur**

The first week with Eames is mind-numbingly awkward. They’re trying to piece together a relationship based on a history of semi-prostitution and no shared interests. They try going to the cinema; Eames chooses and Arthur complains or Arthur chooses and Eames gets bored. They go out to a wine bar and Arthur orders a diet coke then rolls his eyes at the bill. Arthur has to pay, and the interaction just doesn’t work.

They end up just crashing most nights in Eames’s house, but Arthur has nothing to do during the day and Eames does what little work he can get from home. The house is far too small for them to be separated by nothing more than a room. They snap, and bicker and argue about the washing up.

Until Eames passes Arthur on the sofa one day, lying face down playing on his phone. He lands a slap on Arthur’s arse and Arthur looks up, face heated.

A minute later they’re in a tangled mostly-naked heap on the floor.

“Look.” Eames says once they’re finished. “This was never a ‘relationship’, yeah? We can’t force it to be one. It was only ever hot sex. So let’s just have hot sex for a week then you can go home and keep your Dad happy, alright?”

After that, things go a lot smoother.

The sex is different now that Arthur is calling the shots and at first he tries testing it. Tries actually saying ‘no’, just to see if Eames stops. Eames does. So Arthur tries it in more awkward situations; he gets Eames riled up and hot and then abruptly stops and turns away to play with his phone. He gets Eames just to the point of orgasm then pulls out and jerks himself off before rolling over and falling asleep. It drives Eames absolutely crazy, and the crazier Eames gets, the wilder the sex gets, and the brattier Arthur gets, until they’re constantly grabbing at each other. Suddenly two people in a small house doesn’t seem as bad, because it means that they’re always within pouncing distance.

Arthur doesn’t want to leave when the week is up. He clings onto Eames a bit and Eames laughs and pats his head.

“Don’t worry kid. Come back next month.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Course.” Eames pats his arse. “I’ll buy a new paddle.”

“I won’t let you use it.”

Eames gives a broad grin and kisses him hard. Arthur thinks about that kiss all the way back on the train.

 

**Eames**

So it turns out the only way I can actually have a relationship with my kid is if we constantly have sex and if he acts like a complete and utter little _shit_ about it.

Not that I’m complaining.

Because fuck me it’s hot.

I think it hits me, the look on his face when he first tells me to stop and of course I do. But before, maybe it never occurred to him he could do that, or maybe he felt that would stop him getting gifts I don’t know. Either way it hits me properly just how fucked up we both were previously. Except once he realises he can make me stop he gets fucking _addicted_ to it and suddenly I’m being abandoned mid-way through, or ignored all evening, or given half a blowjob and having to tug myself off in a screaming desperate heap in the bathroom with the noise of that fucking phone game going on outside.

He’s a skinny-arsed little sadist he is.

And fucking hell I fall in love with him all over again.

It’s not sustainable, I mean there’s only so long I can go around with a semi-permanent erection, so I pack him off home eventually and we send each other the odd dirty text in the meantime. Or rather, I send him dirty texts and he responds with a letter of the alphabet.  It feels, fuck I know it shouldn’t, but it feels wild. Feels like it used to, with me desperately trying to find something to get me other than a bored look and the back of his arse.

He comes over maybe once a month? A bit less? And every time he does it goes mad in my little house. I cancel all my work that week, and we basically just roll around in every room. He finds new ways to get to me, every single time, and I suddenly realise what I like about this new, highly-frustrating Arthur. He never does look bored. He always looks like he’s enjoying it immensely.

He never used to look like that. Not all the time. He wants it now. He even gets more into using the paddle, except of course the little bastard tends to whack me three times far too hard then drop in next to me and demand a blow job.

There’s nothing better than looking up at him from between his legs, arse all stinging, and see his face tipped back in pleasure. Because this is utterly and 100% what he wants to be doing with me.

I think I’d be happy just with that. Having a kinky little boy-toy who comes up and denies me orgasms every odd week until he finds a proper bloke to go out with. Maybe that might have been it. But it’s Cobb, of all people, that throws a spanner in that.

Cobb and his business plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternative title for this chapter: CONSENT IS SEXY :p
> 
> There's about two more chapters left on this. I had vague ideas of trying to get to 15 to match the other one, but I don't think it would benefit from being dragged out quite that long! Enjoy this chapter anyway, next one won't be too long in coming.


	12. Twelve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Starts with a Cobb POV this one, and there's now a end in sight, this will be a 13 chaptered fic.
> 
> Also it might help to remember Cobb currently looks a bit like Romeo from the DiCaprio Romeo and Juliet :p

**Cobb**

The idea starts forming while he’s at university. He thinks it through, mulls it around in his head, and gets his ideas together. Shadowing a councillor turns out to be incredibly dull, so he uses the time to sketch and think and plan.

When he’s ready, he thinks for a bit more and then comes to Eames.

He knocks on Eames’s door a day he knows Arthur is away. Bringing Arthur into this now will make things complicated. Cobb has no idea just how the relationship between Arthur and Eames is organised and frankly he doesn’t care. He needs Eames right now, not Arthur.

Eames frowns and invites him in, “Well? Arthur’s not here.”

“I know.” Cobb looks at him trying to hide the uncertainty he feels. “I just … I wanted to talk to you.”

“Yeah?”

“You can make hardware. You’ve set up a business.”

Eames looks at him and then sighs, rolling his eyes. “Let me guess, you’ve had a business idea and you want to pitch it and for me to agree to give you advice?”

Cobb shrugs. “Sort of. I mean … I wanted you to help.”

“For money? You’ll pay.”

“That’s … another thing I wanted help with.”

Eames raises an eyebrow. “You want me to fund you?”

“No.” Cobb looks at him, right in the eye. “I want you to convince Arthur to fund me.”

Eames stares at him, looking for the joke, and when none arrives he rubs his eyes. “I’ve just lost a business, in case you didn’t notice.”

“So you’re bored.”

“I’m not _bored_ …”

“Yes you are.” Cobb gives him a knowing look from behind his fringe. “You do nothing except dull consultancy for Yusuf and kinky sex with Arthur. You need something else in your life.”

“So what did you have in mind?” Eames leans back, “There aren’t many new ideas out there. Do you really have an idea in your head that hasn’t already been thought up by some frat boy in California?”

“Yes.”

“Well what the hell is it.”

Cobb leans forward, and gives a small smile, “Dreams…”

 

**Eames**

Alright, I’ll admit it, it’s not a bad idea. Cobb’s got it into his head to make a device for getting into people’s heads. Fucking around with their dreams. Not in a completely prescriptive way, certainly not to start with. He’s not aiming to produce, say, a perfect fantasy of banging a whipped-cream covered John Barrowman on the back of a motorcycle. But he figures with the right cues and codes and stimulations you can produce certain types of dreams. Drifting on a lake, floating in the sky, going to a party. Actually he reckons that with brief flashed images, smells, and sounds hidden in white noise he could get pretty close to Barrowman, cream and motorcycles, but that’s not what he’s aiming for right off the bat.

And, fucking annoying though it is, he’s right. I am bored.

He needs me for a couple of things. First off, I’m the only one with access to a lawyer. Ariadne can sort the legal stuff out, help him actually get the company certified and make sure the important parts of his idea are protected. Secondly from a design point of view – this gizmo needs to look sleek and stylish and comfortable while still containing all the bits he needs to make it work. And of course, there’s Arthur, whose the only one of us who currently has money.

“You want me to fuck Arthur senseless until he agrees to give you funding?” I try, because damn but this is embarrassing. Suddenly I’m the one Cobb’s pimping out.

“No, I want you to talk to your _boyfriend_ and get him on board.” Whatever his mouth is saying his expression makes it clear: he wants me to do whatever it takes to draw Arthur in.

“Why don’t you talk to him?” I try, “You’re his friend.”

“The last thing I talked him into almost got us both arrested.”

I shrug, “The last thing _I_ talked him into _would’ve_ got us arrested if the waiter had actually walked into the bathrooms.”

He gives me a disgusted look. “I don’t care. Just talk to him. He listens to you.”

I have to laugh at that. Cobb watches, still unimpressed. His opinion of me was never high and now it’s coming down like a druggie on cold turkey. “I hate to break it to you, but he very much does not listen to me.” Specifically he refuses to listen to words like _fucking let me come you sadistic little shit_.

Wouldn’t have it any other way.

It’s just not great for business discussions.

Anyway I promise I’ll try my best and so I scrub up proper for when Arthur arrives. Take him out for a good meal, get him a bit drunk, then we come back and I’m a good little boy and don’t even complain when he drags his lips off my cock to go put on music. I watch and wait, and then when he narrows his eyes and demands to know what’s going on, I tell him.

“Cobb’s got a business proposition.”

“What?” He looks baffled.

“Cobb. Your friend Cobb. Floppy hair, annoying face, nice arse. He has an idea for a product that he wants to form a business to sell.” I try and expand on it but honestly, it isn’t that complicated an idea.

He scowls at me, irritated. “I got _that_. I just don’t get why you’re telling me instead of Cobb.”

“Well … he wants you to fund it, you know. He thought maybe I might have better luck asking you. You know, given I can give you … perks.”

I say it all suggestive, wriggling my eyebrows and stroking my poor hard cock. It’s a joke, really it is, and I’m not expecting the response I get. His face goes white, he looks a bit like he’s going to be sick and then he just sort of staggers over to the sofa.

“Kid?” I try to touch his arm but he knocks my hand away and looks up with murder in his eyes.

“Are you _fucking_ kidding me? You think I’d want you to do _anything_ like that? Given I _know_ how it feels?”

That sentence lands in the room like an unexploded bomb, and I gingerly step around it. Don’t quite want to poke it in case it explodes but I damn well can’t leave it sitting there.

Only one thing to do; make a cuppa.

I do my trousers up and go into the kitchen. I stick the kettle on and Arthur slouches in, all prickly and looking a little tearful. And that’s when I start to _really_ understand just how screwed up he all is inside. I pour him a cup of tea and then he tells me, so I _can_ understand.

The poor kid went and fell in love with me, first week we were together. Except he was my call-boy and even he was smart enough to know that was a bad idea. So then he hated me for a bit, which was easy enough given I was the smug bastard who fucked him. And then the daft little sod just bounced back and forth between love and hate, picking up free gifts along the way and feeling shit about every single one of them. Just not quite shit enough to actually quit, or maybe so shit that he could only imagine that he’d feel worse if he stopped doing it, so he carried on with the same old thing through sheer terrified inertia.

He says more words than I’ve ever heard him say at once, and when he’s finished he just slumps against the kitchen counter and says, “Eames, I’m gonna break that mug.”

“Go for it.”

He looks up at me, eyes a bit glassy, “Really?”

“Yeah, why not.”

He stares at the mug. “Why do you let me do all this stuff to you? All the stuff I’ve been doing since you moved house.”

I shrug. “I like you. And it turns me on.”

His mouth twitches up at that, “Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Even though I’m a brat?”

“More because you’re a brat.”

He picks up my mug and drops it on the floor. We both watch as it smashes and spills tea everywhere. Easy come, easy go. Mugs aren’t expensive. Especially not that one, which was from Sports Direct. Don’t even know when I bought it.

He looks up at me, “I’m going to phone Cobb.”

“Yeah, talk with him. He’s the entrepreneur.”

Arthur picks up his phone. He seems a bit happier now he’s got tea all over his expensive shoes. He hesitates though, looking at me before dialling the number. “Do you think it’s a good idea? Cobb’s business? Is it a good investment?”

“Yeah, it’s not bad.”

He makes the call. And I stand in the kitchen watching him, with tea soaking into the linoleum and all the little shards littering the floor.

Of all the things that could’ve gotten broken, I figure a cheap mug is probably the best we both could’ve hoped for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Penultimate chapter for you! One chapter left and it should be out this week.
> 
> And yes, I already have the next Arthur/Eames fic in my head - it's a three-level dream-verse epic! I've got a big piece of paper on my wall so I don't forget what's happening. Three dream levels means you get three AUs in one, including kid!Eames, kid!Arthur and scary-bsdm-top!Arthur. There will be fun, and angst, and some plot, and kinky sex. Hope some of you will migrate over to it once this one wraps up!


	13. Thirteen

**Arthur**

Living with Eames goes a lot smoother once they both have a job. There’s less time for them to lie around the house snapping at each other, and the times they do spend together they’re more exhausted and less likely to start an argument. Arthur and Cobb get together and hash through how exactly they’re going to work their new invention, Yusuf sends sketches through for designs, and Eames spends much of the time in the big warehouse, building and designing and trying to create a prototype.

“Why is our office a warehouse?” Arthur asks as one point, scowling as Eames fires up an electric saw.

“It’s cheap.” Cobb answers.

Arthur rolls his eyes, “I thought I was bankrolling this, am I not investing enough money?”

The saw turns off and Eames raises his visor, grinning at them, “First rule of starting a business: There Is Never Enough Money.

The second rule turns out to be There Is Never Enough Time and things get pretty hectic as they lead up to the launch. It’s in a big set of rooms in Arthur’s father’s country club, and Eames has contacted all the big names he knows for the invites. Eames’s name might be mud after the scandal, but his expertise is still trusted, and after all, he’s still well known. He keeps out of the way though, not wanting to take over the business from Cobb, happy just to be involved in the basics.

They’re still fiddling with things half an hour before the launch; with Ariadne piling up sleek leaflets and making sure all the posters are straight and Yusuf working his way through the buffet food. Eames finally manages to get Cobb sent off to change into a suit and then scoots Arthur behind a pillar.

“Leave it, if it fails now, it fails. And it won’t fail. You look dashing.”

“I look far too young to be investing in _anything_.”

“Young and dashing. You got your speech all ready?”

“Eames.” And Arthur suddenly does look very young. “How is this going to work, we’re just a couple of kids. How is anyone going to take us seriously?”

Eames shrugs. “If you were in any other industry, that would be a problem. But this is tech, or close enough to pretend. This is _owned_ by the young. And you’re selling the easiest thing in the world to sell.”

“A weird sleep dome thing?”

“Dreams, Arthur, you’re selling dreams.”

Arthur flips him off and then comes out as the first guests start to arrive. These are men Eames knows, and he can’t help feel out of place. He’s Eames’s _rent boy_ , surely some of them must realise, some of them must know, he’s not a big-name investor, he’s just Cobb’s friend fooling around with his dad’s money.

He glances back. Eames gives him an encouraging smile and then holds up his middle finger in return. As Arthur watches, he uses it to make a surprisingly elaborate promise about exactly what they’ll be able to get up to as soon as the launch is over.

Arthur grins.

 

**Eames**

My kid does look good in a suit. I’m nervous as all fucking hell at the launch; terrified it won’t work, terrified someone’ll bring up the scandal or look at Cobb the wrong way, or turn out to be allergic to vol au vents or something. I’ve done a hundred launches and they always make me feel sick, but of course this is the kid’s night and I can’t spoil it. I witter out some reassuring words then do an obscene gesture that seems to calm him down.

He does well at the speech though. He’s got all that casual old-money confidence and elegance that I never had. I think me and Yusuf’s first launch was in a cheap hotel in Camden; some Cockney git and an immigrant kid, we didn’t exactly bring the place down. But Arthur and Cobb are scrubbed up and fresh-faced and they sell it well. I mean I know it helped me and Yusuf giving them a leg up, and all the experience and knowledge. Not to mention Arthur’s money. At the end of the day though, it’s still them on the front line.

I hang around, nodding at people I know, trying to pull off the ‘infamous sex scandal’ persona and then I nip out and just walk around the grounds for a bit to stop anyone trying to talk to me. I’m feeling pretty good. It’s good to have a job again, to have some direction, feel I’m going somewhere. I’m more than happy to let Cobb take the driving seat on this one. I just want to tinker around in the warehouse making stuff and then shag my kid senseless in the evenings.

I slope back in for the fancy dinner. They’ve sat me next to Arthur which would be a bit awkward except apparently success get my kid turned on because his hand is squeezing above my knee the whole meal. When we get to the dessert I’m drunk enough to lean across and whisper, “Kid, I’ve been thinking.”

“You really should be careful with that, Eames.”

“Look, if I keep working at this, you know, we could get a bigger house. Together.”

He turns and looks at me then, interested but a bit worried, “Eames … I don’t think I’m old enough to own property…”

“You own a _business_.”

He doesn’t want to do it, I can tell. We’ve come a hell of a long way, but buying a house with me is still a bit too far what he’s ready for just yet. I gently pat his hand under the table. “It’s fine kid. I’ll probably get a bigger place though, once this thing kicks off properly.”

He smiles, I know he wants to lean over and kiss me, but that would be a tad unwise given we’re surrounded by investors in suits. “Maybe the next one I’ll buy with you?”

“Yeah?”

“Maybe.”

Brat.

He leans across, his breath is soft and laughing against my ear. “Besides, I’ve been lead to believe that if I choose to invest in a house with you, there’s a strong possibility you’ll give it away to a rent boy.”

He’s a fucking _tease_ my kid. His hand slides up to my cock and stays there, gently resting, all damn evening.

My Arthur.

Fucking love him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finished! Hope you all enjoyed. The next one will start in about a week, so come check back then for more Arthur/Eames, this time actually in the dream-verse where they belong.


End file.
